03_01_27

superbowl and unrelated agitation

It's amazing how much I will allow other people to stress me out. Last night we went to a Superbowl party thrown by our friends up near the hospital, and all anyone was talking about was the residency match. Who had already matched. Who was up to match next week. What were the top three match rankings for Person X, and how did this influence the chances of Person Y to match at her top three? It was wholly stressful and tiring, and by the end of the night, I was not only hating all medical students on the planet, myself included, for being such a high-strung, competitive, single-track mind group of psychos; but also thanking god that we had moved off campus, away from the epicenter of the stress. (The San Andreas Fault, if you will.)

Somewhere around the middle of the second quarter, I got locked into a conversation with another medical student applying in the same field as I. After some gossip about the different programs at which we had interviewed and discovering that we, like most of our cohort, had a first-choice program in common, this other student proceeded to harangue me that there were basically two to three times as many applicants to this first-choice program as there were spots historically offered to students from our school. "They can't accept all of us!" she concluded, somewhat shrilly (I thought).

"No, I guess they can't." I agreed lamely. And of course they won't. That's why it's an application process. And it happens every year. And people get through it and are, in general, happy with the results. And even so, is there anything that we can do about it at this point? But I guess this goes to show that people can make their own stress in any given situation. As if there isn't enough in life to worry about, we make more out of thin air.

What annoys me the most, though, is that I actually allowed that prefab stress to rub off.

But anyway, aside from the above nuisance, the Superbowl party was fun, in that it was good to see (certain) people and catch up with them while eating artichoke dip and buffalo wings. I happen to think that football is boring as shit (except for the injuries--that's either the med student or the sadist side of me coming out), but there was some sort of betting pool going on that made the game slightly more interesting. No, we didn't win any money, god dammit. But it was fun to pretend that we might.

Right now I'm working on creating a website for our wedding. In my mind's eye, it will consist of wedding information and updates, registry links, photos, hotel and New York tourism links, and a honeymoon photo essay. So far, it consists of nothing. Also, even when I get some stuff up, it will be ugly, because I'm not some sort of fancy pants web designer...as you can clearly see. Nevertheless, link to follow as soon as I get some stuff fleshed out.

Michelle